Monday, September 29, 2008

So a funny thing happened today. We now have four Chiclet ibooks. Mario asked our friend and neighbor if she'd be willing to swap her older MacBook without the led-backlit screen for our brand new Macbook. She's lent it to me for a few days to see what I think of it. I was supposed to use it today and see if it made me sick. I have lots of library work to do and that was my plan, Stan. BUT my internet went out. No workie for me today.

When the internets went down, I yelled at the Invisibles in my house and told them to quite screwing around with the computers. I've got work to do! That did not help. At least as far as I could tell. I got in the car and drove to Hood River to get a new router. I was listening to The Best of Our Knowledge on XM. It was all about books and libraries and I was sobbing as I drove down the winding road. If you can, go here and listen to this moving and interesting hour, especially the segment with Geraldine Brooks when she talks about the factual basis for her novel The People of the Book.

The People of the Book is about the Sarajevo Haggadah, an extraordinary illuminated book about Passover probably created somewhere around 1300. It has survived many catastrophic events, including the Nazis and the bombing of Sarajevo in the 1990s, and it has survived in part because at least one Muslim librarian saved it. Something very moving about a Muslim librarian saving a piece of Judaica.

Of course, Brooks describes it much better than I can. I'm sitting in the library typing this on a PC. (Really, how do people live like this? I kid the PC users. I envy you. At least you have one computer and the use of those ol' internets.)

So once again my electronic problems took me back out into the world. I would have never heard about this extraordinary book if it hadn't happened. Plus I heard Ursula Le Guin talking about the sad state of publishing. Have I mentioned that I have decided that I am going to start publishing my own books, at least some of them, probably starting with a limited run of Church of the Old Mermaids. People keep asking me for copies of it, so I've decided to do something about that. Publishing has to change. I think that much of publishing is going to go to POD publishing. So I'll just do it a little sooner than the rest. I don't like it as well because I love print. I love knowing that the ink soaks into the pages like a kind of magic potion that helps create the story.Ink is part of the mythmaking of storytelling in our culture. POD is photocopying essentially. That's pretty much plastic on paper.

Anyway, we can still tell beautiful stories that way and get them out to the public. I'll let you know how I progress.

Right now I'm not progressing.

OK. Mario's waiting for me. We've got to get home.

Did I tell you the other night we wandered around town in the dark reading our books outloud under the street lights. He read Terrastina & Mazolli. I read Church of the Old Mermaids. Glorious.

So if I owe you email, I apologize! It's going to be a while still.

Did you watch the debates? Don't you really hunger for a true liberal? McCain was so contemptuous of Obama. Really made my skin crawl. Actually crawl. OK, maybe just shiver.

3 comments:

You now have 4 Chiclet ibooks? You didn't finish the story. Are Chiclet ibooks those 90's version of Mac, those fruit colored ibooks? i'm not very Mac savvy, although i own a MacBook.

Thank you for reminding me of Geraldine Brooks. i haven't yet read book, March. I have it and i'm looking for my next novel so it must be a sign. i'm taking it as one, anyway.

i have alot of books. i'm thinking maybe 2500. i like my books in paperback and i love to get them from secondhand stores. So, i will read March next.

i enjoy reading your blog. it inspired me to create one of my own. Soon, i will send the link to my parents who are on the road. They just sold their house and are driving an RV to my brother's in North Carolina. i'm so jealous. They are driving from Oregon to North Carolina, via Montana, our ancestral home.

No, I don't have the clamshell--the blueberry one. Actually, I have one, but it doesn't have a battery. Yes, I still have the chiclets, the white ibooks. I'm trying to sell some of them since they're perfectly good for other people.

Thanks, Ramona! I knew she was going to put it in the TNews but I thought it was October not September. But thanks for letting me know!